The Psalms and Saints of Old

The Melody of a Prayer

“You turned my wailing into dancing…that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.”

~ Psalm 30:11-12 ~

God, what is it about music? Why does it stir us so? It seems you had a strategy here. One beyond mere entertainment. Something closer to a divine attribute. Something similar to omnipresence, for it seems to follow us wherever we go.

Whistles of the birds carry a cadence that mimic our melodies. Or do we mimic there’s? Either way, its music that we share. That we create. That envelops us.

“I will sing and make music with all my soul….For great is your love, higher than the heavens.”

~ Psalm 108:1b, 4a ~

The footsteps of students in a high school hallway patter with rhythmic patterns; tempos in each heart beat not only to pump our blood but to remind us that music was meant to move life along. A tune at a time. Lyric by lyric. Whatever the key or time signature. Our lives sing, harmonizing with the pain and pleasure of those around us. Even if we don’t know their stories. Even if we don’t know their names. Their dreams or depression. We were meant to sing. Both the tone deaf and the angelic among us.

“You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.”

~ Psalm 88:18 ~

Music changes our moods. Reminds us of memories that feel more like a dream. We struggle to recall, to place the feeling, to reconstruct the faces, the conversation, the emotion. The memory proves elusive. Evasive, that is, until the right song graces the right playlist at the right time re-membering the memory’s body and soul with powerful precision. “Did it happen?” we wonder. The melody whispers, “Indeed.”

“The heavens praise your wonders, LORD, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the saints.”

~ Psalm 89:5 ~

Maybe this is why God included an entire book of the Bible filled with songs. Songs that remind us of divine faithfulness embedded in indescribable pain. Pain only incarnated when translated through melodies, however discordant or hopeful. Melodies that invite an honesty oddly absent from most conversations and prayers. An honesty that verges on irreverence to the immature but unveils a sacred intimacy to the initiated.

“How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

~ Psalm 13:1 ~

Music brings masses together beautifully and mysteriously. Street performers in any city croon through catalogues of songs that stop passersby mid-stride, often grabbing for a phone to capture the song they’ve heard many times before. Something is arresting. A melody mixing with the agitation of a busy street. The angry and the distant inexplicably mutter the melody with a slight upturn of the corner of their mouth. Their gaze betrays that even if just for a moment they are transferred from the present to a memory. Transported by a song. By music.

“My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But you, LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.”

~ Psalm 102:11-12 ~

Music, therefore, seems timeless. Yes, enduring, but able to move seamlessly across the spectrum of past, present, and yet to be. Maybe this is why every country and alma mater incorporates music into their rituals and traditions, interweaving allegiances of the present to the past, promising resilience in what’s to come. As each group’s music begins, the lyrics synchronize their breathe, their tone, their words, forging a union far beyond the music yet impossible to reach without it.

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”

~ Psalm 103:11-12 ~

Music, though, doesn’t just proffer unity. It encapsulates love. Lovers dance at weddings to their song. A song that captivates even as it confounds. No explanation needed for why the song means so much to them. No logic could reason it anyhow. The song is just theirs, just interlaces their love. Swaying to each note, the lovers search the iris of their eyes, reliving the birth of their love, remembering when this song became theirs.

“He remembered us in our low estate—His love endures forever. And freed us from our enemies—His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature—His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven—His love endures forever.”

~ Psalm 136:23-26 ~

Old cathedrals provided a platform for the mystery of music. The vaulted ceilings echo each note, reverberating the cries of God’s saints. The stone walls respond with heaven’s harmonies. An antiphonal interaction spanning the gates of heaven and the pews below. United in a moment. Undivided by space or time. United by music.

“When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.”

~ Psalm 104:30 ~

Even as music mystifies, it animates. A favorite song interrupts the boredom of traffic prompting the driver to reach for the volume to transform the monotony into a concert of one. Walking through a store, a favorite song blankets each aisle from the intercom, heads slightly bobbing, feet gently tapping, and, on occasion, all-out dancing in an abandoned aisle away from judging eyes. Sitting in a nursing home, a life ravaged by Alzheimer’s pauses and is pierced by a song from times gone by, clearing the fog of the diseased even if only for a moment, maybe two and half minutes or so.

Music creates. Brings life. Animates what was once dead. Lifeless. Dark and void.

Maybe that’s why C.S. Lewis envisioned Aslan creating the world through song. By singing. By embedding music into the fabric of such a vast and mysterious universe. So that each song east of Eden whispers wonders of a paradise lost yet still present in each melody.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

~ Psalm 8:3-4 ~

God, is music the language you speak between each of your persons? Or is music the Spirit itself? Its divinity is undeniable, Lord. Its actions remind me of you. Animating. Uniting. Alluring. Remembering. It’s almost as if in addition to the incarnation itself, music marks your presence among us. Enfleshes the I AM. Invites us into the heavenly realms so that we aren’t overwhelmed or imprisoned in the mire of the dire and the mundane.

“God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise.”

~ Psalm 47:6-7 ~

God, I marvel at how music helps me find you. Helps me find me. Find others. Slows my anxious heart so easily swept away with worry and self-loathing. Lulls me to sleep; shakes awake my sluggish Spirit; and guides me through heavenly halls echoing with stories of saints of old.

God, help me to sing. But please: just don’t ask me to dance.

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